Dec 18, 2020
Meet Houston McConnell, CFA Senior Analyst, Investment Research
Please join us in welcoming Houston McConnell, CFA to the DeMarche team. Houston is our newest Senior Analyst for Investment Research. He previously worked at Mariner Wealth Advisors as a senior analyst for portfolio solutions. Houston earned his Bachelor of Science in Economics from Rice University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder.
Houston recently sat down with our communications staff for a short introductory interview.
Thanks for taking time to talk to us today, Houston. What path brought you to the finance profession?
As a child, I actually wanted to be an architect. I think the interest in finance started in about 7th or 8th grade. Our class was assigned a stock market game. We were split into teams and competed with each other. My team ended up winning, and that's the first time that I was really exposed to anything related to finance. I didn't give it much thought as a career until I was in high school. During my senior year, I was able to take some college classes, and I took microeconomics and macroeconomics. Those two classes were what got me thinking about economics. I really enjoyed the problem solving aspect of it and explaining the story behind the numbers. That led me to major in economics and minor in business in college. I really enjoyed those business classes and had a great corporate finance professor. His class was probably the biggest I guess influence on me. After college, I got an internship in Kansas City working for a financial firm, and that confirmed that this was the industry for me.
Tell us more about some the mentors who influenced your journey to the finance profession.
Sure. I had one professor, Russell Green, he taught a class at Rice University called international finance. It focused on the exchange rates and currencies. He had previously served as the financial attaché to India for the U.S. Treasury Department. That class is what really brought some things together for me that I didn’t think were related to finance. I’ve always been a big history buff, and that professor, with his experience working overseas, showed how things like history and culture are related to finance. Before that, I didn’t fully understand what an economist or a finance professional did. I also had another professor, Alex Butler, who really dug into CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) and some of the fundamentals of financial analysis, and that's the class that really got me into financial modeling. That's an aspect of the profession I also enjoy.
Many people think of finance as something that’s very technical. But along with financial modeling, you also mentioned the importance of culture and history. It seems that you have an expansive view of finance. Tell us more about your outlook.
I get really excited about this topic. I really do think that the financial world has an impact on everyone. It's not just people with money who are affected. Financial decisions are what cause countries to rise and fall. Over the course of history, you can see great empires collapsing because of financial problems or economic problems. Countries that don’t manage their finances well end up not feeding their people. Economics and finance really tie so many things together. So when we talk to clients, we're not just telling them about numbers on a page, we're consulting with people about how they can use financial tools to keep their organizations healthy and enduring, whether it’s providing much needed a charity work in the community, funding a college endowment, or building people's retirement savings. I think it's really important to take a holistic view. It’s not just about numbers and money. It’s about how this is going to impact people.
Speaking of clients, what excites you about your new position at DeMarche?
First, I think the most exciting thing for me is the firm’s independently-owned structure. That gives me an opportunity to make a positive impact on the firm and our clients. I am really excited about the opportunity to wear multiple hats and contribute in various ways. Investment research is my primary job description, but there's the potential for more. I’m also excited about working with the client base that DeMarche has. That was really important for me in my decision to work here. I’ve been wanting the opportunity to grow and develop a skill set dealing with institutional clients with a firm that has a history of doing it successfully and a team that has deep experience. So there are many opportunities to me for me to learn from the senior members of the team.
Final question. Very few people ever say that they loved taking the CFA exam, but we understand that you loved the third and final part of the test?
Well, love is a strong word. I did really enjoy Level 3 of the CFA, which I don't think many people do. I think the enjoyment of Level 3 of the CFA for most people is the fact that they may never have to take a test again. But for me, I just love that the third level requires you to tie together multiple data points from different fields and create a narrative that's going to be heard by a client and is related to people. It’s not something that a computer can do for you. Relating all of the information that we learn in the CFA program is the key part of getting the designation. It’s not just looking up tracking error, or calculating a covariance or other statistics. The point is that you can explain to a client what that means to them and their portfolio. That's what I really enjoy doing, and I enjoyed being challenged that way on the test. I love to write, and I think I used up the entire margin of the CFA answer booklet as I was furiously writing through the entire morning section. It was a great learning experience. I would encourage any financial professional looking to expand their skill set to take it.
